Our Goat Adventure...and our homemade goat feed mix!

On February 12, 2014, we welcomed home Lil' Tex (Nubian doe, red hair), Rueger (Nubian buck, white hair), and Hope (Nubian doe, black). Here are a few pictures of them making it home:

  

The reason I call it an adventure is because we weren't planning on goat ownership. As of the day we brought them home, I bought over $300 in goat supplies, and housed them in a large dog kennel because we hadn't built our goat fence and had nothing for goats! Within three days, I had our fence built and our goats felt more comfortable. Below is a picture of my nephew and his buddies building our goat fence!

Do I recommend starting out like this? No. Don't get me wrong, I don't regret the way we did it, but I do wish we had been a tad more prepared. As a result of the craziness, our main milker, Lil' Tex, lost a majority of her milk production, and we have since had to dry her up. Now, within two weeks of obtaining our goats, Hope gave birth to a buckling, who we named Slingshot! We did know she was pregnant, but we had no idea she was in labor! Slingshot was a complete surprise, because when we went out the night of 02/23/2014 to feed our goats, Phillip thought he stepped on a cat, but it was in fact a baby goat! So, I prepared and stressed about delivering a goat, and God took care of it for me! 

Now, we have four goats! We love them all! Malachi loves to move the kennel so he can use it to reach limbs for them.

 As a family, we made the decision to take our children's old playhouse to make our goats a little goat house! The goats love it, and it is the perfect size for our four goats!

 Now, we are unconventional when it comes to goat ownership. We don't vaccinate our goats, and we feed them an all-natural diet. They are given lots of plant based kitchen scraps, and I will admit that I sometimes make them special salads out of love! At least once a day, they are given two large scoops of our homemade goat feed mix (recipe below) and I make sure they have alfalfa hay and water all of the time. One website that I use for a lot of helpful information is www.fiascofarm.com. (They have the best goat wipe recipe!!!)

So, you probably didn't want to hear our story, but you probably did look at this to find a feed recipe! So, here you go:

Camp Family Ranch Goat Feed

Ingredients: 2 - 50 lb. bags of Rogue Feed Alfalfa pellets, 1 - 25 lb. bag of green peas, 1 - 25 lb. bag of black oil sunflower seed

 You will also need a large storage container. We use a galvanized trash can!

 Place several scoops of alfalfa pellets in the can.

 Add a large scoop of blackoil sunflower seed.

 Add a large scoop of dried green peas.

 (This is what it will look like)

 Now, using your scoop, mix it until it is combined. You will want to do layers to make certain that every scoop has a good mix!

Obviously, all four goats love this! I hope yours will too!